Gratuitous

The obsessive inventory of the family's apartment in "Franny and Zooey"—there are page-long lists, one of which includes "three radios (a 1927 Freshman, a 1932 Stromberg-Carlson, and a 1941 R.C.A.)"—is not the kind of detail novelists use to capture social or psychological truth. It is more like the gratuitous, self-delighting detail children use when inventing fantasy worlds.

Kirsch thinks that on the evidence of the later published work, Salinger was moving toward a fiction that was "not a way of exploring reality, but a substitute for it." If it turns out that additional work by Salinger exists and that it further extends this emphasis on "inventing fantasy worlds" and eschews the futile gesturing after "social or psychological truth," I'll actually be much more likely to read it.

Comments

The obsessive inventory of the family's apartment in "Franny and Zooey"—there are page-long lists, one of which includes "three radios (a 1927 Freshman, a 1932 Stromberg-Carlson, and a 1941 R.C.A.)"—is not the kind of detail novelists use to capture social or psychological truth. It is more like the gratuitous, self-delighting detail children use when inventing fantasy worlds.

Kirsch thinks that on the evidence of the later published work, Salinger was moving toward a fiction that was "not a way of exploring reality, but a substitute for it." If it turns out that additional work by Salinger exists and that it further extends this emphasis on "inventing fantasy worlds" and eschews the futile gesturing after "social or psychological truth," I'll actually be much more likely to read it.